HUnewearl_Meira
Feb 20, 2004, 06:15 PM
Egad.
All right, so I work at the civil firm that Home Depot has chosen to do all its civil plans for the West Coast. They come to us by default. We've done civil planning for Home Depots in Fresno, Bakersfield, Hercules, Oakland, Selma, Delano, Lompoc, Brentwood, Oroville, Morgan Hill, Madera, Marinwood, Colma, Daly City, Placerville, Red Bluff, San Mateo, San Rafael, Santa Cruz, Tracy, Ukiah, Watsonville, Merced, and many, many others. In short, if you're in California, and there's a Home Depot in your city, then we've probably got drawings for its parking lot, public utilities and adjacent streets in this office.
So we've had this Home Depot in Auburn we've been doing conceptual designs for since 2000. Yes, sometimes these things take quite some time. Often, projects get started, then sat on for a while before any drawings even begin. That's no big deal. This doesn't bother me.
Now because Home Depot likes to buy dirt-cheap land to build on, we're installing a new stretch of Willow Creek Road so that people can *get* to this Home Depot. No problem here. Our alignment drawings have been done, and plans have been put together. Mostly. There's still work to be done there, as it's still in the conceptual stage. That doesn't bother me, either though. There's nothing there that's really all that tough or confusing.
Heck, even the Home Depot itself is kind of a cookie-cutter design. We've got a reasonably sized parking lot with several entrances on multiple sides, and we've even gone so far as to extend Professional Drive to intersect with 1st Avenue. Nothing wrong here, either. It's good clean design, and it's really the sort that I enjoy working with.
-----
Now we get to part that bugs me.
Currently, Willow Creek Road comes to a smack end at a barricade on just the other side of its intersection with Highway 49. Doesn't seem so bad, at first.
Yet, for reasons that haven't become readily apparent to me, we are now being asked to redesign Highway 49 between Belle Road and Atwood Road. We're adding turn lanes, mostly. It sounds like a simple task, and I suppose that under normal human circumstances, it would be no big deal.
However, there are a number of inherent problems here.
First of all, the guy that's been giving the instructions on what he wants done,
1. Has no friggin' clue what he wants
2. Has some inherent inability to properly communicate his intentions
3. Offers NOTHING in the way of anything helpful to the project.
Now, first of all, we've not sent our Survey crew out to create a topographic map of the highway as it currently exists. Why? Because that would cost money, and our Survey crew has plenty of other things to do. All right, so what are we going to do for resource materials? It's not exactly going to work to just try to ass-type it into AutoCAD or something.
Phase One
We started off originally, by getting on the horn with some guy at Caltrans. Caltrans, for those that are not familiar with California, is the government agency in charge of taking care of all the transit facilities in the state of California. Suffice it to say that all our highway are belong to them.
So, they scan a couple of old aerial photographs for us. 150 DPI. Not bad, I guess, but still pitiful for an aerial photo. I'm personally used to aerial photos that cover huge portions of land with a DPI high enough for you to zoom in on a car, and figure out it's make, model, and who's driving it. On THIS photo, cars appear to be little rectangles on the ground. It's also in black and white. Which is odd. Is that thing on the side of the road a sidewalk, or a sand berm? There's no way to tell!
So we finally get it together, realizing full and well that these crappy photos are NOT going to give us the information we need, nor are they going to give us much of anything useful. So, my supervisor just had me draw some lines on them, label a couple of intersections, and we threw the results back, more or less just saying, "This is more or less what we have in mind." I'm not exactly sure what the point of that was, other than to indicate that we're keen to work on the job. All right, that annoyance was done with, so at this point, I figured I was pretty well done with it for a while.
Little did I realize that a week or two later, I'd have to deal with it again.
Phase Two
Now we're trying to get serious. We get on the horn again with Caltrans to get some more information. What do we get this time?
Now THIS is when things start to get REALLY annoying with Caltrans.
Now for some odd, derranged reason, Caltrans feels they have to be different. How do they manifest this? I will tell you how.
First, they tell us that they can't send us any AutoCAD drawings.
Why the hell not?
Because Caltrans must be different. Therefore, unless the rest of the friggin' construction industry, they DON'T USE industry-standard software. No, they have to use the inherently inferior Microstation, rather than AutoCAD. Why is Microstation inferior? There's NO readily available command line, forcing the user to do everything by buttons like it's a freaking kiddie Microsoft "Eee! I think I'm an architect with this point-and-click, drag-a-wall-here house designing program!", NOTHING other than Microstation itself supports its freaky .dgn file format, it uses some goofy method of maintaining precision making translation to other programs awkward (if at all possible), and when it comes down to it, NO ONE USES IT! Except for Caltrans, because they HAVE to be different from the rest of the world. As I recall, back in high school, we used to call the program, "Tweakerstation".
We eventually managed to wrangle the .dgn files out of them. It was about that time that I discovered that AutoCAD doesn't really like .dgn files, and has no native ability to import them. Luckily, our Civil package has a special ability to do just this.
So, I import the files, and take a look. It's a huge, jumbled mess, but it very much does resemble a stretch of highway. I figure a little bit of reference may help.
First I try to overlay the aerial photos we had. I never did find the proper scale. There's a reason for this though, and it didn't become apparent until this point-- These photos were taken with a crappy camera from a helicopter several years ago, by a Caltrans employee-- meaning that his equipment couldn't have been very new, OR sophisticated, because Caltrans has no concept of what ANYONE else in the world is doing, or more importantly, being a government agency, they have no concept of what it's like to use somewhat current technology to produce results that serve a somewhat functional purpose.
It would seem that the camera used had something of a fish eye to it. Meaning that, though the picture was taken from several thousand feet in the air, SOMEHOW many buildings were more visible from the side than they were from the top. Scratch the photos. Don't want to see those ever again.
So, to figure out where I am, I tried importing our civil drawings. Here, I encounter *two* problems, one of which, I can only shrug at, as it is to be expected.
The problem I shrug at, is the fact that the reference point Caltrans based their drawings on is different from the references point we based ours own. This is to be expected really, because we surveyed a field off between a rural area and a residential area, and Caltrans had surveyed a highway stretching for a great distance.
Now, the problem that bugged me more, and still plagues me NOW, is that Caltrans, but cause they MUST be different, works *exclusively* in Metric. So EVERYTHING was off, and it's just a huge mess. No comparing with our own drawings, now.
So there was nothing we could do with this useless crap, really. Other than poke and prod at it.
A note about Caltrans and their history with the metric system-- In 1997, I believe it was, they release an updated standards booklet, and collection of standard drawings. The only significant change from their previous installment several years earlier was... You guessed it... All units were now metric. Now, this was a mistake on Caltrans' part, because engineers and contractors generally ignored and otherwised refused to use this update, instead referencing the older standards and specifications. Finally, in 2001, Caltrans came halfway to their senses, and re-released their standards again, THIS time, with both Metric AND Standard units.
Phase Three
We got on the horn again, and found SOMEONE who'd drawn it in AutoCAD for Caltrans. Finally! Something reasonable.
Two problems, again. Both a pain in the hind end. First of all, it was drawn for Caltrans, so it's entirely metric (which, on a trangent, for some odd reason that makes little or no sense to me, AutoCAD doesn't like to observe that some interesections of object exist while using metric). Now, I can deal with metric. It's annoying, and it screws me up, but it's still numbers so I can work with it. The REALLY significant problem with this drawing, however, is that who ever drew it did NOT have any concept of what he was doing.
Who ever drew this thing, evidently had no concept of what an arc or circle is, as EVERYTHING is drawn with lines or polylines (multiple line segments connected end-to-end as a single object). Now, he may have been sick the day his drafting instructor talked about the arc and circle commands, but by golly, he was there when he talked about the SPLINE command, as in this drawing, if it's not a line, polyline or text, then it IS a spline. For the record, splines are some of the most useless objects that exist in AutoCAD-- they're good for only two things: making leaders look more interesting, and displaying contours. I suppose they could have applications in 3D projects as well, but AutoCAD isn't a major program for that sort of purpose.
That alone would've bothered me, but the thing that really threw it over the edge, was the fact that this guy had little or no organization applied to the drawing what so ever. A few things had their own layers. I believe the centerline for the highway had three or four of its own. The Caltrans easement had its own layer. Striping has its own layer as well, unfortunately, the draftsman that did this job felt that the striping had to share its layer with every line representing curbs, gutters, sidewalks, buildings, TREES, and what have you. In addition to the hundreds of other layers that objects were scattered across. If that weren't bad enough, existing curb and curb proposed by Caltrans were both on the same layer, as well.
Still, we're never get anything better to work with, so I cleaned it up, set up a few sheets, and created a base drawing to draw all my proposed striping and curbs in.
After working on it for a week or two, I finally had something we could present. So we did. This time, I thought I was rid of the project. For good.
Phase Four
Wrong. Like a boomerang, it came back. Not with any mark-ups, no, God forbid they should SHOW us what's wrong. Nope, this time it's a letter with a new description of what they want. It didn't so much conflict the original document they gave us to tell us what they want, as much as it just halfway made some sense this time. There WERE, though, some things that were different.
So, with much annoyance, I made the changes. Took a little while, but we managed to get it out the door again.
Phase Five
Now, it's come back again. This time is, "Oh yeah, we forgot, can you do this, too?" Yeah, it just kinda slipped their minds that they want a 4' shoulder on all the right turns, and an 8' shoulder everywhere else. it makes no sense to me, but it's not my place to argue, I've just got to draw what they tell me to.
Urg. I hate this particular set of sheets. It's gonna be a loooong afternoon. Hopefully I'll get this thing done by the end of the day, so I don't have to deal with it again on Monday...
All right, so I work at the civil firm that Home Depot has chosen to do all its civil plans for the West Coast. They come to us by default. We've done civil planning for Home Depots in Fresno, Bakersfield, Hercules, Oakland, Selma, Delano, Lompoc, Brentwood, Oroville, Morgan Hill, Madera, Marinwood, Colma, Daly City, Placerville, Red Bluff, San Mateo, San Rafael, Santa Cruz, Tracy, Ukiah, Watsonville, Merced, and many, many others. In short, if you're in California, and there's a Home Depot in your city, then we've probably got drawings for its parking lot, public utilities and adjacent streets in this office.
So we've had this Home Depot in Auburn we've been doing conceptual designs for since 2000. Yes, sometimes these things take quite some time. Often, projects get started, then sat on for a while before any drawings even begin. That's no big deal. This doesn't bother me.
Now because Home Depot likes to buy dirt-cheap land to build on, we're installing a new stretch of Willow Creek Road so that people can *get* to this Home Depot. No problem here. Our alignment drawings have been done, and plans have been put together. Mostly. There's still work to be done there, as it's still in the conceptual stage. That doesn't bother me, either though. There's nothing there that's really all that tough or confusing.
Heck, even the Home Depot itself is kind of a cookie-cutter design. We've got a reasonably sized parking lot with several entrances on multiple sides, and we've even gone so far as to extend Professional Drive to intersect with 1st Avenue. Nothing wrong here, either. It's good clean design, and it's really the sort that I enjoy working with.
-----
Now we get to part that bugs me.
Currently, Willow Creek Road comes to a smack end at a barricade on just the other side of its intersection with Highway 49. Doesn't seem so bad, at first.
Yet, for reasons that haven't become readily apparent to me, we are now being asked to redesign Highway 49 between Belle Road and Atwood Road. We're adding turn lanes, mostly. It sounds like a simple task, and I suppose that under normal human circumstances, it would be no big deal.
However, there are a number of inherent problems here.
First of all, the guy that's been giving the instructions on what he wants done,
1. Has no friggin' clue what he wants
2. Has some inherent inability to properly communicate his intentions
3. Offers NOTHING in the way of anything helpful to the project.
Now, first of all, we've not sent our Survey crew out to create a topographic map of the highway as it currently exists. Why? Because that would cost money, and our Survey crew has plenty of other things to do. All right, so what are we going to do for resource materials? It's not exactly going to work to just try to ass-type it into AutoCAD or something.
Phase One
We started off originally, by getting on the horn with some guy at Caltrans. Caltrans, for those that are not familiar with California, is the government agency in charge of taking care of all the transit facilities in the state of California. Suffice it to say that all our highway are belong to them.
So, they scan a couple of old aerial photographs for us. 150 DPI. Not bad, I guess, but still pitiful for an aerial photo. I'm personally used to aerial photos that cover huge portions of land with a DPI high enough for you to zoom in on a car, and figure out it's make, model, and who's driving it. On THIS photo, cars appear to be little rectangles on the ground. It's also in black and white. Which is odd. Is that thing on the side of the road a sidewalk, or a sand berm? There's no way to tell!
So we finally get it together, realizing full and well that these crappy photos are NOT going to give us the information we need, nor are they going to give us much of anything useful. So, my supervisor just had me draw some lines on them, label a couple of intersections, and we threw the results back, more or less just saying, "This is more or less what we have in mind." I'm not exactly sure what the point of that was, other than to indicate that we're keen to work on the job. All right, that annoyance was done with, so at this point, I figured I was pretty well done with it for a while.
Little did I realize that a week or two later, I'd have to deal with it again.
Phase Two
Now we're trying to get serious. We get on the horn again with Caltrans to get some more information. What do we get this time?
Now THIS is when things start to get REALLY annoying with Caltrans.
Now for some odd, derranged reason, Caltrans feels they have to be different. How do they manifest this? I will tell you how.
First, they tell us that they can't send us any AutoCAD drawings.
Why the hell not?
Because Caltrans must be different. Therefore, unless the rest of the friggin' construction industry, they DON'T USE industry-standard software. No, they have to use the inherently inferior Microstation, rather than AutoCAD. Why is Microstation inferior? There's NO readily available command line, forcing the user to do everything by buttons like it's a freaking kiddie Microsoft "Eee! I think I'm an architect with this point-and-click, drag-a-wall-here house designing program!", NOTHING other than Microstation itself supports its freaky .dgn file format, it uses some goofy method of maintaining precision making translation to other programs awkward (if at all possible), and when it comes down to it, NO ONE USES IT! Except for Caltrans, because they HAVE to be different from the rest of the world. As I recall, back in high school, we used to call the program, "Tweakerstation".
We eventually managed to wrangle the .dgn files out of them. It was about that time that I discovered that AutoCAD doesn't really like .dgn files, and has no native ability to import them. Luckily, our Civil package has a special ability to do just this.
So, I import the files, and take a look. It's a huge, jumbled mess, but it very much does resemble a stretch of highway. I figure a little bit of reference may help.
First I try to overlay the aerial photos we had. I never did find the proper scale. There's a reason for this though, and it didn't become apparent until this point-- These photos were taken with a crappy camera from a helicopter several years ago, by a Caltrans employee-- meaning that his equipment couldn't have been very new, OR sophisticated, because Caltrans has no concept of what ANYONE else in the world is doing, or more importantly, being a government agency, they have no concept of what it's like to use somewhat current technology to produce results that serve a somewhat functional purpose.
It would seem that the camera used had something of a fish eye to it. Meaning that, though the picture was taken from several thousand feet in the air, SOMEHOW many buildings were more visible from the side than they were from the top. Scratch the photos. Don't want to see those ever again.
So, to figure out where I am, I tried importing our civil drawings. Here, I encounter *two* problems, one of which, I can only shrug at, as it is to be expected.
The problem I shrug at, is the fact that the reference point Caltrans based their drawings on is different from the references point we based ours own. This is to be expected really, because we surveyed a field off between a rural area and a residential area, and Caltrans had surveyed a highway stretching for a great distance.
Now, the problem that bugged me more, and still plagues me NOW, is that Caltrans, but cause they MUST be different, works *exclusively* in Metric. So EVERYTHING was off, and it's just a huge mess. No comparing with our own drawings, now.
So there was nothing we could do with this useless crap, really. Other than poke and prod at it.
A note about Caltrans and their history with the metric system-- In 1997, I believe it was, they release an updated standards booklet, and collection of standard drawings. The only significant change from their previous installment several years earlier was... You guessed it... All units were now metric. Now, this was a mistake on Caltrans' part, because engineers and contractors generally ignored and otherwised refused to use this update, instead referencing the older standards and specifications. Finally, in 2001, Caltrans came halfway to their senses, and re-released their standards again, THIS time, with both Metric AND Standard units.
Phase Three
We got on the horn again, and found SOMEONE who'd drawn it in AutoCAD for Caltrans. Finally! Something reasonable.
Two problems, again. Both a pain in the hind end. First of all, it was drawn for Caltrans, so it's entirely metric (which, on a trangent, for some odd reason that makes little or no sense to me, AutoCAD doesn't like to observe that some interesections of object exist while using metric). Now, I can deal with metric. It's annoying, and it screws me up, but it's still numbers so I can work with it. The REALLY significant problem with this drawing, however, is that who ever drew it did NOT have any concept of what he was doing.
Who ever drew this thing, evidently had no concept of what an arc or circle is, as EVERYTHING is drawn with lines or polylines (multiple line segments connected end-to-end as a single object). Now, he may have been sick the day his drafting instructor talked about the arc and circle commands, but by golly, he was there when he talked about the SPLINE command, as in this drawing, if it's not a line, polyline or text, then it IS a spline. For the record, splines are some of the most useless objects that exist in AutoCAD-- they're good for only two things: making leaders look more interesting, and displaying contours. I suppose they could have applications in 3D projects as well, but AutoCAD isn't a major program for that sort of purpose.
That alone would've bothered me, but the thing that really threw it over the edge, was the fact that this guy had little or no organization applied to the drawing what so ever. A few things had their own layers. I believe the centerline for the highway had three or four of its own. The Caltrans easement had its own layer. Striping has its own layer as well, unfortunately, the draftsman that did this job felt that the striping had to share its layer with every line representing curbs, gutters, sidewalks, buildings, TREES, and what have you. In addition to the hundreds of other layers that objects were scattered across. If that weren't bad enough, existing curb and curb proposed by Caltrans were both on the same layer, as well.
Still, we're never get anything better to work with, so I cleaned it up, set up a few sheets, and created a base drawing to draw all my proposed striping and curbs in.
After working on it for a week or two, I finally had something we could present. So we did. This time, I thought I was rid of the project. For good.
Phase Four
Wrong. Like a boomerang, it came back. Not with any mark-ups, no, God forbid they should SHOW us what's wrong. Nope, this time it's a letter with a new description of what they want. It didn't so much conflict the original document they gave us to tell us what they want, as much as it just halfway made some sense this time. There WERE, though, some things that were different.
So, with much annoyance, I made the changes. Took a little while, but we managed to get it out the door again.
Phase Five
Now, it's come back again. This time is, "Oh yeah, we forgot, can you do this, too?" Yeah, it just kinda slipped their minds that they want a 4' shoulder on all the right turns, and an 8' shoulder everywhere else. it makes no sense to me, but it's not my place to argue, I've just got to draw what they tell me to.
Urg. I hate this particular set of sheets. It's gonna be a loooong afternoon. Hopefully I'll get this thing done by the end of the day, so I don't have to deal with it again on Monday...